USING CLEAN LANGUAGE IN HEBREW

by Michael A.D. Berkal

At first I thought I would need to sit down and translate all the
Clean Language questions into Hebrew before I could do any work at
all ... But a chance came, when I went home to Israel for a week, to
try out GMT (Grovian Metaphor Therapy) without any translation, I
decided just to see what happens ...

I had observed that I had used phrases coined in one language in
an intuitive way in another language. For example, the phrase 'at the
end of the day' does not exist in Israel, but I have found that
I used that phrase in Hebrew a number of times, in the right context
that I would have used it in English. So I presupposed that once I
have acquired a skill then it does not matter which language I use,
the translation will happen automatically.

It is interesting to note that words like 'and' and 'the' and (in
some cases) 'when' are only an abbreviation to the word in Hebrew and
not a whole word.

I met with a friend, and explained a bit about GMT and just set
off...

The thing that helped me the most was the compass (see the diagram
in Less is More: The Art of Clean
Language). I knew the direction I wanted to go in, i.e. forward
in time, back in time, developing attributions etc... So the
questions just flowed, including the full syntax, and I found myself
doing a whole session that worked excellently -- all in Hebrew.

Although special consideration can be given to the translation of
the syntax and the use of the questions, I must say that from my
observation, if you don't give it much thought and just do it, in
which ever language you want, as long as you have practised it for a
while in English ... then it'll go quite smooth.